We should absolutely get rid of FPTP in favour of proportional representation, however, I don’t know that the current polling situation is actually a result of FPTP. I’m a pretty consistent NDP voter, but I’ve voted Liberal twice - Trudeau once (to bring in proportional rep… lol), and Carney this last time. I know this is unpopular but I didn’t “lend” my vote to Carney to beat the CPC, I genuinely think he’s doing great and will happily vote for Liberals again so long as he’s at the helm.
Proportional Representation is what you need for multi-seat bodies like parliament. It’s absolutely the best method for such bodies, imo. For single seat elections, proportional doesn’t work as their are no proportions for a single seat and generally you don’t want to just vote for party for such roles, but individuals themselves. You’ll need something like Ranked Choice or (my preference) Approval voting for those seats to avoid the two party inevitability.
Ranked Choice is a misuse of ranked ballots. Say an election goes like this:
40% vote A > B > C.
35% vote C > B > A.
25% vote B > C > A.Plurality says A wins, because Plurality sucks. You don’t even need a bare majority. You just need everyone else to split.
RCV says C wins: B has the fewest top votes, so they’re eliminated. The race becomes 40% A > C versus 60% C > A. Better… but still wrong, because 65% of people would prefer B > C.
Condorcet methods like Ranked Pairs get that right. They model every runoff: A vs B is 40-60, A vs C is 40-60, B vs C is 65-35. B wins every 1v1 and is obviously the best candidate according to these voters. The supermajority prefers B.
This and how hard it would be to ever amend the constitution (y’know, to move away from FPTP, for example) are the biggest problems for Canadian democracy going forwards.
It won’t sink us in the next 10 years, but past that who knows. History has a way of turning heroes into villains, and vice-verse.
Except the Constitution doesn’t stipulate FPTP. It defines how seats are allocated based on population and provinces and all but doesn’t say how to decide what MPs go in what seats. It doesn’t mention parties either.
